Public Event at the ZiF - Lecture

This presentation will address directly some of the thought-provoking questions posed by the conference organisers around the social lives of contemporary universities, the complex interrelationships between actors representing different institutionalised procedures and political agendas involved in the global expansion of higher education, and the spatialities and temporalities underpinning students lives in an era of internationalisation. The talk will focus on one aspect of international higher education - transnational education (TNE). Defined commonly as formal academic programmes in which learners are located in a country other than the one in which the awarding institution is based (McBurnie and Ziguras, 2007, p. 21), TNE raises all sorts of questions around student (im)mobility, international collaborations and the multi-located university. TNE is growing, worldwide, and an increasingly wide range of countries are offering transnational qualifications to a diversifying student body. What it means to be a global student is consequently becoming ever more complex and nuanced. The presentation will draw upon two - ostensibly very different - projects to examine these issues; one which has explored a range of TNE provision in Hong Kong and the other which provides an account of a particular TNE programme (a Diploma H.E. in Palliative Care) offered in Nairobi, Kenya. These two projects provide us with useful insights into broader issues around the spatial and temporal transformation of higher education in the 21st century.